She immediately perked up as though buoyed by a mysterious muffin left by an unknown benefactor. “What did you play?”

He hesitated a bit. “Flute. But I haven’t touched it since high school.”

“I bet you could still play if you tried.” She sat up straighter. Her eyes were bright. She had found him. After asking thousands of people, she had finally found the one who was going to get her out. His only qualifications were that he had answered “I used to” to her second question and given an inconclusive response to her first, but she had lowered her standards considerably since she started. She certainly wasn’t going to let the guy get away just because he was a little out of practice. “Do you still have it?”

“Not with me.” The flute he used had once belonged to his mother. He couldn’t imagine that she had sold it.

“Go get it.”

“Now wait. I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”

Despite its surprising success the first time, the woman was doing her best to keep herself from resorting to slapping him again. But she was excited, more excited than she had been . . . ever, as far as she could remember. With very great effort, she reminded herself that, unlike her, he was new to the whole situation and would need time to absorb it.

“I’m not asking you to do anything other than get the flute. You don’t have any problem with that, right? It’s what I want you to do, so you should be able to leave without being bothered by the Beherr—I mean, the Song of Mastery. Just run the errand, take some time to think about everything, and come back here. I’ll be waiting.”

It sounded simple enough. Like most people with common sense, he had a deep distrust of things that sound simple. But he did want to help the woman if he could, and he didn’t have anything else he needed to be doing. After the ridiculous display he put on, he thought it was best not to try going back to work. Hopefully the weekend would give him time to come up with an explanation for his behavior. He did not expect this explanation to contain the word “Beherrschunglied.”

“You could be waiting a while. I’m not sure where it is.”

She sighed, but she was smiling afterwards. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting,” she said, forgetting that she had screamed the exact amount of time into his face earlier that day. “I can wait a little longer.” She tried to lean back and smacked her head against the garbage can. “But don’t take too long, okay? This really isn’t as comfortable as it looks.”